


Geometry

by Jadedanddark



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fashion & Couture, Free yourself with a well-fitted blazer, Gen, House Elves, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-03-11
Packaged: 2021-02-22 23:41:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23102260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadedanddark/pseuds/Jadedanddark
Summary: A student ponders the relationship between house elves, diy clothesmaking, and the ethics of whale hunting.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Geometry

Her name is Arachne Malkin, and she's my great-grandmother. There are other robe shops, but hers is the best. Everyone knows this, and that means they leave her alone whene'er there's trouble. You can burn libraries, assassinate politicians, picket a business, but if it means you and your kids go naked, suddenly everyone is willing to take a step back and not get too near to really damaging things. The Dark Lord and his lot were terrible people, murderers and worse, but they were a snappily dressed group. The resistance would have taken anyone willing to join, but not Nona, because what would they do if something happened to her?  
She helped the resistance in her own way. It's amazing how many of their children's robe alterations never got invoiced properly, and how many of the other team were sent their bills twice. They hardly noticed. When you're wealthy, and they were because that's what comes with being in power, you don't pay your own bills, that's what the servants are for.  
I wonder about those servants. I wonder what they would have done with their lives, if they'd had more options. Would they still have aligned themselves with murderers? Would they, given time and energy to serve only themselves, have made the world different?  
There isn't a philosophy class taught at Hogwarts, nor an ethics class. Some of the teachers can be dragged into a discussion about whether someone should use a certain spell right after teaching is how it's used, but you still have to time it right, or it's a point from Ravenclaw, Miss Malkin. They don't want to talk about what could be different at the core. They only want to change the surface of things, make them bigger or purple or taste like strawberry. They will tell you how to do these things but not why, and not how it works at the very bottom of the stack.  
Nona, she knows how things work at the bottom. The sound of her sewing machine lulled me to sleep every night of my life until I left for school. I grew up knowing that clothing is more geometry than anything else, that surface area and weight and tensile strength are things you need to know if you want to make even so much as a pillowcase. Magic will put the pieces together for you, but really you have to do the math yourself.  
I'm very good at math.  
We aren't so well-off that we have our own house elf, and Nona got rid of the brownie when they had a falling out over what was scrap cloth and what was rubbish. She screamed that was her livelihood in the dustbin, the brownie screamed back that if that was true, her livelihood was rubbish. She threw a Knut in his face so hard it left a mark, and he stomped out hard enough to leave dents in the floorboards.  
That was how I learned that you could dismiss a servant. Brownies will take just about any insult except the one of being paid for their work. House elves, well, whatever it is about clothing that sends them away works the same. They say Harry Potter tricked one of the high royal families into dismissing their elf, but I don't know how it was done. It was the nineties, nobody knows how anything was done.  
And I wonder what a house elf does when it hasn't got someone to serve. I wonder what would be different if they could choose.

I had intended to get a cup of linden tea from the kitchen and go back to the history of jellied salamander in de-greasing potion, but I don't leave immediately. I just stand there with my tea and watch the elves at work, preparing food enough to feed a whole school their dinner. They have such grace to their movements, such focus. They look truly happy doing what they're doing.  
Mostly.  
One of them is chopping onions at speed and nips her finger, giving a yelp and sticking the finger in her mouth. Within seconds the elf next to her cuffs her hard and snaps that the onions weren't going to chop themselves, Fonny. She jumps, and carefully holding her injury out of the food, goes back to it.  
One of them notices me then and says that if I didn't need anything else, miss, I should leave as they were very busy. I leave.

But I start paying attention to when my room was cleaned. I know that if I come in at just the right moment there might be a gentle whisper of someone small huffing themselves out of my sight. The bottom of the pile has always been invisible.  
"This is a lapel," I say to the apparently empty room, plucking at my robe. "It's double-faced, meitre style, wool-linen blend and saturated dyed. The hem is waltz-length, invisible stitching everywhere."  
I know none of these words make sense to people who didn't grow up in a robe shop, but I'm sure the little hint of movement under my bed hasn't moved. They're probably waiting for me to go so they can finish the room.  
"The length of the sleeve is the distance from shoulder to wrist, plus one inch at the wrist end and a quarter inch at the shoulder end. The piece is shaped like a leg of mutton, attached to the bodice via a hole the circumference of the shoulder joint at the armpit when the arm is relaxed."  
I do need to leave or I'll be late for class. Before I do, I mention casually to the empty room, "There's a strong possibility that I'll have more to say about this tomorrow."

The next day I tell nobody about how to choose a fabric for a piece, based on the fiber and drape and utility. I mention that extra may be needed to match plaids and stripes. I casually suggest, to the air, that if a cloth has a nap it should all stroke the same way, ideally downwards.  
I talk about darts and diamonds and other ways that a two dimensional object can be make into a three dimensional one.  
I instruct my furniture that one must accommodate for stretch, and not trust something to look the same on the model as it does on the cutting table.  
I demonstrate how to tie a knot with one hand.  
I lay the little repair kit that Nona insisted I take to school out on the bed, and hold up the tools one by one, naming them and their use, sometimes showing how it works on my handkerchief, then mending it with a different stitch every time.  
I pace as I debate the merits of rolled versus invisible hems.  
I feel a little dumb doing this, and it's a month of lectures before one of my needles goes missing. It's the oldest and dullest and the one I'd be least likely to miss. That evening I talk about flannel and sand and the other ways one takes care of a needle so that it will serve best. I talk about needles with a ball tip that won't catch on knits, and the hair-thin ones that are used on silk. I worry aloud that one of my classmates must be using a dull, rusty needle like the one I lost to mend their things, which would make for a poor learning tool. "Why didn't they take this one?" I say, holding up my sturdiest and sharpest. "User comfort has an effect on the outcome."  
The next day my old needle is polished and back in its place, the sturdy one missing.

I talk about the inside of clothing, the bones that hold up a corset and the horse hair that stiffens a collar. "Without them, it all falls down," I say, angled toward the curtain for no particular reason. "It used to be that we used whale bones. They suffered, we had what we wanted, and that worked for awhile. It always works when the people getting hurt don't fight back. Then we found a system where nobody has to get hurt and the world moved on. The whales are doing better for it, I hear."

Someone rats me out and I spend an afternoon convincing Madam Pomfrey that I haven't been inhaling too many fumes from potions class. I tell her that I talk to myself sometimes. I say I miss home and the sound of the sewing machines, so talking about the robe shop is a comfort. She looks like she might hug me, but doesn't. A letter is sent to Nona, and I am sent back to class.  
At Easter I tell Nona about the elves, and the onion. She is quiet for the meal. I can see her thinking, and I know that she's putting what I've said against the letter she was sent, and is doing a bit of math. She puts more soup in my bowl, more than I can eat, because she worries that I look thin. "Your jacket hangs on you," she says, not looking at my jacket. It doesn't hang. If anything I've grown a bit, and the chest is tighter.   
When I go back to school, I have a roll of muslin with me and some books. Nona insists that it's time I did my own alterations, and shushes me when I say I already do them. "Make a sloper for yourself," she says, jerking her head at the muslin. "Mark it up. Maybe one of your friends would like to practice the craft." I tell her the only craft any of the students ever want to learn is witchcraft, and she mutters something about millennials. I mean, fair.

In my dorm I carefully measure every inch of my body and mark down what I find. I cut out the sloper, talking the whole time, saying that I am making a second skin. This doesn't fit like a shirt. I can't really move in it when I've put it together, but when I peel it off and stuff it I have as perfect a model as I can get. I explain about fit and how it affects the wearer.  
"You can walk with your shoulders hunched, have one leg longer, be missing an arm or just be lumpy everywhere, but if your clothes fit you properly, you only walk with confidence and beauty. It's touching your skin, so it should act like it deserves the privilege."

On the last day of the school year I am called into the headmistress's office. Waiting for me are two people, Professor McGonagall and Fonny.  
The elf is looking very sharp. I see where the muslin of her dress has been worn thin by dozens of stitchlines and the tearing them out, but it's a practiced eye that can see it. Fonny is standing with confidence and beauty, a dimity flounce behind her and cuffs exactly the right length in front of her, hands held together with calm gesture and white knuckles.  
I'm very good at math.  
"Miss Malkin, can you explain this?" The headmistress says, waving at Fonny.   
"I don't think so, ma'am."   
"Fonny says she is a free elf. I can't help but remember that you are, shall we say, well versed in what it would take to create such a thing as she currently possesses." I look at Fonny. She looks back, eyes large even for a house elf, knuckles even whiter.  
"Whoever made the dress did a lovely job," I say. "But it wasn't me who made it. I can say with complete honestly that I don't know who did."  
"Do you know who might have given it to her?"  
"Fonny gave it to herself!" The elf bursts out. She claps both hands over her mouth, squeaking with alarm at her own boldness. I can't hold back a smile. McGonagall is not as easily read.  
"You made it yourself?"  
"Fonny made it of Fonny. No other may wear it!" My smile widens. She must have her own sloper somewhere, buried under wherever it is house elves sleep. McGonagall ponders this.  
"Then I suppose it must be yours," she said at last. "I hope freedom treats you well, Fonny. You will always have employment here if you should choose to return." Fonny, eyes brimming, smile wide as a whale's, gives her a deep curtsey. "Thank you, Headmistress. Goodbye, miss." And with a snap of her fingers, she's gone.  
McGonagall gives me an arch look. "I do hope you understand the gravity of what just happened," she says. I nod.  
"This is a school," I say, more bravely than I feel. "People come here to learn. Nobody gets to choose what their student might do with what they learned."   
"I see. In that case, miss Malkin, you may go. I believe the train is leaving for London at the correct time, so you'd best be ready."  
"Ma'am? You aren't... aren't angry with me?" She suddenly looks very tired.  
"I have lived through two separate revolutions, Miss Malkin. I don't have the energy for a third. If you want to run that one, be my guest."  
On the train I am questioned by my friends about my visit to the office. What had the Headmistress wanted to talk about?  
"Geometry," I say. They don't understand. I spend the train ride home watching the green hills go by, and picking at a stray thread.


End file.
